


Ameles Potamos

by Draconicmaw



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Amnesia, Dark Fantasy, Eldritch Romance, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Yu-Gi-Oh Monthly Random Pairing Challenge, Yu-Gi-Oh Monthly Random Pairing Challenge October 2020, eldritch horror, getting seduced by an eldritch monstrosity, inexplicit Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draconicmaw/pseuds/Draconicmaw
Summary: Otogi keeps having hazy moments of confusion, and his life is getting stranger and stranger. And now, he's looking everywhere for something, though he can never seem to remember just what it is.Or, the one where Otogi gets seduced by an eldritch monstrosity. Written for theYu-Gi-Oh Monthly Random Pairing ChallengeI started on Tumblr.**“Do… do I know you?” he asked the man, tall and thin and looming over him.A slow blink of those haunting eyes, and endlessly long platinum blue hair danced in the breeze. “Do you?” the stranger asked, his voice smooth and sibilant and fluid, slithering into Otogi’s ears and coiling around his brainstem.Otogi blinked again, confused, his question already forgotten in the face of those long lashes and sharp but elegant features.“I think you dropped this,” the man said, and then paper was brushing his fingers again.He reflexively grabbed and looked down. His brows furrowed. He didn’t recall dropping the flyer, but apparently, he had.His lips parted, and he looked back up.But the man was gone.
Relationships: Otogi Ryuuji | Duke Devlin/Dartz (Yu-Gi-Oh)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Ameles Potamos

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the piece I wrote for the Yu-Gi-Oh Monthly Random Pairing Challenge that I started on Tumblr. You can find the post on this link [here](https://draconicmaw.tumblr.com/post/630755842811101184/october-2020-yu-gi-oh-random-pairing-challenge). I would love it if you decided to participate, too!
> 
> I drew at random pairing 12: Otogi Ryuuji | Duke Devlin x Dartz, and the theme I drew at random was theme 3: Maze. Aaaand I decided to write something ooky spooky for ooky spooky season. I also peppered in a few of the other pairings featured in the challenge. This is an AU with no shadow games or other dark magic… or is it? 
> 
> Also, if this at all manages to make you uncomfortable in any way, that means I succeeded!
> 
> Either way, I hope you enjoy this!

The wind whispered, chill and crisp and tasting of autumn, through the branches of the arboretum. Fallen leaves, in their myriad of yellows and reds and oranges and browns, drifted down and brushed along the path. Otogi savored each breath as the breeze played with the long bits of hair dangling free, away from the confines of his ponytail.

It was such an excellent day, a perfect day to walk through the arboretum to return to his dorm, even though the trip was longer this route.

He didn’t mind a longer route when it was so beautiful out.

He was in no hurry to experience winter, with all its accompaniments – thick jackets and chapped hands and icy sidewalks and frosted windows. The aesthetics of the season were nice, but the rest… not so much.

So, he wanted to enjoy this weather while it lasted. Another gentle gust of wind, like a sigh, breezed through, and Otogi watched the leaves skate and occasionally somersault over the mottled concrete of the sidewalk.

And then he saw _it_ , a gasp catching in his lungs.

It was sprawling across the path, lithe and lanky for its incredible length, its dark scales rasping dryly over leaves and sidewalk. A huge snake, the biggest he’d ever seen out in the wild.

In the muted light of a cloudy afternoon, it gleamed faintly a dark purple, or perhaps a dark blue, as indiscernible as the sky on a black, starless night. He could only stand, frozen, shaking.

Never before had he felt fear for snakes or other reptiles, but something about this creature had his skin prickling unpleasantly.

It was so endlessly long, coiling and writhing over itself over and over, churning like a knot of shadowy tendrils before him. And then the head raised up, cold, slitted eyes staring back at him, one a gemlike aqua and the other a metallic gold. Unblinking, piercing, haunting. The forked tongue flicked, tasting the air, flashing pale pink before receding back into that abyssal maw.

Still, Otogi had not moved, and the serpent had not advanced, and yet, it loomed closer, until that raised head and arched neck peered down at him.

A hiss, sibilant, like the breeze through the thinning foliage, but so much more foreboding, making something dark and viscous and venomous stick in Otogi’s veins to freeze him from the inside out.

Then it lunged, striking, fangs flashing to tear into flesh.

* * *

Otogi jolted awake, gasping air into his panicked lungs. He was sitting up, his bare, sweat-slicked chest heaving like he’d just run an Olympic marathon. His wisps of hair had escaped from his bedtime braid to cling in wet tendrils to his shoulders and the back of his neck and over the crests of his collarbone.

He threw the covers off and tossed his legs over the edge of the bed. He held his clammy face in his clammier hands, felt his hot, panting breath tingle against the sweat. That cold, abject dread still slithered through his veins, even as the exact details of his nightmare slipped from his memories like sand through his fingers.

“What the fuck,” he muttered, flopping back on the bed to blink up at his ceiling, striped a dim orange from the streetlamps outside shining between his blinds.

Once his breathing was under control, and his heartrate had settled back into its regular rhythm, it wasn’t long before sleep found him again.

And though he had no more nightmares, still in his dreams there were echoes, like ripples on a pond, of mismatched eyes and a sibilant hiss like a breeze through the trees.

* * *

For several days, he didn’t walk through the arboretum, even when the sun was shining, warm and gentle, through the trees. He always had a reason – the walk was longer, he was tired from his back-to-back classes, he needed more time for his homework, he needed to meet up with his friends soon, it was raining, et cetera, et cetera. Legitimate reasons, reasonable reasons, but still, behind the windows of his eyes and into the heart of his mind, they felt flimsy and weak, feeble excuses from a feeble place.

So, with trepidation lingering in in his twitching fingertips and in the fluttering of his breath in his throat, he started down that autumn-ravaged path. It was another warm day, warm for autumn, at least, and he was glad that there was not a single trace of clouds in the sky. Bright, sunny, none of the fuzzy, indistinct gray and shadows of an overcast sky. It made everything stark and clear, nothing dark and ambiguous.

The colorful foliage on the branches was much thinner now, and the leaves that used to be there were now scattered across the ground and sometimes lumped into big piles by the groundskeepers. The wind whispered, playfully pushing some of the leaves around, and it was a crisp, refreshing breeze, the kind that Otogi would normally huff with a languid kind of enjoyment. Instead, he shivered, shrinking deeper into the confines of his thin jacket, and tugging close the straps of his backpack around himself with white-knuckled hands.

Tense, and anxious, he looked about, but he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but nothing was there.

“Fuck,” he cursed himself, shaking his tense hands out. He was acting like an idiot. There was nothing to be afraid of.

Not that he was afraid.

And yet he still jumped the slightest bit when he broke around the small bend in the path, and he spotted another person on the path. It was a short young woman, about his age. She looked familiar, and he vaguely remembered her from one of his classes last year. He gave her a small, pleasant smile in greeting. He hoped it didn’t look as shook up as he felt on the inside.

She smiled back, quite cutely actually, and then a gust, stronger than the previous breezes, tore through, and the stack of flyers she cradled in her arms suddenly went flying in a white spray. “Oh!”

Otogi was in motion, hurrying closer to help her gather them up.

“Th-thank you!” she yelped as they both darted to catch ones that were caught in the naked brambles and branches at the edge of the path.

“No problem,” he called back, breathless and laughing, jumping to catch one and wrangle it down from a higher branch.

He glanced at them as he handed them back to her.

“Huh. You guys want to do an American-styled horror fun house for the fall festival?” he asked, rather rhetorically, since it was spelled out right on the paper.

“Y-Yeah! We’ve been working on it for a while now.”

He smiled down at the flyer. He normally enjoyed things like horror movies and spooky stories (his friends called him an adrenaline junky, which he didn’t deny). He wasn’t sure what exactly was different lately – after all, it was just the thought of the arboretum that had been given him the chills, and not in the fun way.

“Can I keep this?” he asked, lifting up the paper.

“For sure! Tell your friends about it, too!” she chirped. “Thanks again! I hope to see you there!” And she waved exuberantly as she turned to continue down the path.

“I’m sure you will!” he called back, smiling after her and then smirking back down at the flyer. “Oh, yeah.” He couldn’t wait to hear Jounouchi yelp in fear at the slightest thing like he usually did, and he was sure both Yugi and Ryou would dig the hell out of going, too. Honda would want to come just to help him pick fun at Jou, too.

Rereading the specifics on the advertisement, he blindly turned to continue on his way.

And promptly bumped into someone’s chest.

“Hey!” he snapped reflexively as he stumbled backward. “Don’t stand so clo—” and his voice died in his throat as he looked up and met the strangest pair of eyes.

One, aqua like a pale gem, the other, gold and flashing metallically.

That gaze made his heart freeze and stutter in his chest before it began to hammer away. Something tingled at the back of his head, flitted just out of reach like a forgotten word on the tip of his tongue.

He blinked up, his bristled anger completely abandoned. “Do… do I know you?” he asked the man, tall and thin and looming over him.

A slow blink of those haunting eyes, and endlessly long platinum blue hair danced in the breeze. “Do you?” the stranger asked, his voice smooth and sibilant and fluid, slithering into Otogi’s ears and coiling around his brainstem.

Otogi blinked again, confused, his question already forgotten in the face of those long lashes and sharp but elegant features.

“I think you dropped this,” the man said, and then paper was brushing his fingers again.

He reflexively grabbed and looked down. His brows furrowed. He didn’t recall dropping the flyer, but apparently, he had.

His lips parted, and he looked back up.

But the man was gone.

Otogi looked up and down the path, but there was no sign of that tall figure, of that long hair that danced so mesmerizingly in the wind.

But then, suddenly, he forgot who, or what, he was looking for.

“What the fuck,” Otogi whispered, holding his forehead. His thoughts were fuzzy and intangible, and panic trickled through him.

What just happened?

He was walking, and he helped that girl, and he… dropped the flyer she gave him…?

He shook his head. He was tired, and his thoughts were making no sense. It was time to return to his dorm room and take a nice long nap.

* * *

Ryou was gone when Otogi returned – probably visiting his hulk of a boyfriend – so Otogi simply slipped the flyer onto Ryou’s bed before he climbed into his own.

What a weird day.

He just needed a nap, and everything would be all better afterward.

* * *

That strange moment in the arboretum was forced to the back of his mind, and he pretended to forget about it, though he never walked the path down the arboretum anymore.

Now, though, it was all far away from his mind as he and his friends walked along the shops downtown.

“Oh! I want to stop here!” Anzu said, and Honda and Jounouchi groaned.

It looked to be an artisan jewelry shop. Otogi reflexively lifted his hand up and touched his earring. He’d been thinking about getting some new ones. Maybe this store would proffer something interesting.

So, he followed behind, leaving just Honda and Jounouchi outside as Ryou, Anzu, Miho, Yugi immediately dispersed among the shelves and the display cases and the rotating racks.

He drifted, mostly just moseying through the aisles. Each piece was absolutely gorgeous, fashioned from polished stones or raw crystals and carefully coiled and twisted and shaped metallic wires. One polished stone was a beautiful blood red, and when he gingerly picked it up to look at it in the light, he could see the little veins and facets on the inside of the crystal. It was twined in a simple but elegant harness of gold-hued wire.

He hadn’t come in looking for a necklace, but this one was too much to his liking to pass up.

When the others were ready to leave, all with their own prospective purchases, they all lined up at the counter.

“Look at what I found,” Ryou gushed, smiling brightly, his pale cheeks flushed. “They’re from a matching set! I’m going to give one to Rafael.” Put together, the pendants on the two chains made a pair of thickly feathered wings.

“He’ll love it!” Miho chirped, and Ryou’s smile widened, his cheeks reddening even more.

“Ugh, you two are so cute it’s disgusting,” Anzu said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re just mad that you and Honda aren’t the mushy kind of couple,” Otogi cut in, smirking at her.

She huffed, looking away, her arms crossing tightly, a blush on her face. “No.”

Yugi began to snicker, but Anzu’s fierce glare quickly cut him off, and he coughed awkwardly into his sleeve.

While they were outside and Anzu blushed over Honda simply telling her that the earrings she bought complemented her eyes and the others chuckled at her and she pursed her lips at them, Otogi carefully removed the price tag from his new necklace and put it on. It was a little heavier than the one he was wearing previously, but the subtle weight of the hand-made pendant thumping against his sternum was pleasant. He tucked the other in his pocket.

They drifted through stores, and the whole group buzzed excitedly when they neared a game store, replete with video games, board games, card games, games galore.

Otogi was perusing the novelty RPG dice (he’d somehow lost his D-20 some time ago). There were several sets that had multi-colored marbling, and he was comparing two (nearly identical) black and gray sets when the voice slithered around the shell of his ear and into the canal to tickle his eardrums.

“That shade of red doesn’t suit you.”

He jumped, gasping, startled, and he looked up to the tall man he hadn’t noticed standing beside him.

Glittering mismatched eyes, unlike any gemstone he’d ever seen, stared back down at him.

“Aren’t you…” but the words trailed off on his tongue, one hand still on the shelf as he turned his body to face the stranger.

A hand, pale and elegant and long-fingered, reached out, and traced the edges of the red stone resting against Otogi’s sternum. “This.”

He glanced down, blinking widely. “I… just bought that,” he said, rather dumbly.

A hum, cold and resonating and making the back of his neck tickle. The stranger’s head tilted, his hair sliding and slipping sinuously over his shoulder. Otogi couldn’t tear his eyes away from the way the glossy strands fanned apart and then grouped back together.

“I believe there is something better suited for you,” the man said, low and rolling, like waves whispering or leaves rustling or waxy scales rasping over one another. His hand withdrew, and then it was lifting back up, and, as if summoned from thin air, a long golden chain dangled from his fingertips. A stone, green like the sea over white sand, swung like a pendulum from the necklace and flashed the fluorescent lights from its polished surface so seductively.

“It’s beautiful,” Otogi breathed as soon as the words surfaced in his foggy mind.

“Not as beautiful as your eyes,” the man whispered, and Otogi shivered, both at that sweetly alluring voice and at the cold hand that gently grasped his chin. With just a fraction of a nudge, he was tilting Otogi’s chin up, and Otogi tore his eyes away from the stone to stare into that mesmerizing heterochromatic gaze. “I want you to wear this, Ryuuji.”

“Yes,” he whimpered, reaching up to grasp weakly at the man’s wrist. A yearning, a swollen ache, unfurled in his chest, and his breath caught in his throat when a cold thumb brushed over his lower lip.

That gelid hand brushed up, cupping his check, then drifting back, and black curls caught around pale fingers as a chilly thumb traced the shell of his ear. Otogi shuddered and melted, his own hand sliding up to hold that cold touch closer.

“Good,” that honeyed voice praised, “my darling.” Those eyes loomed closer.

“ _Yes_ ,” he gasped, arching up, toward that enthralling gaze and those cold, pale lips, but then the hand under his own was gone, and he was unsupported and falling forward, and he would have fallen flat on his face if he didn’t whip his hand out to catch it on the shelf next to him.

He stared down at the ground, his heart pounding and his body hot, as his thoughts fell away like the leaves from the trees. The swinging of his necklace caught his eyes, the way that green gem flickered in the light. His brows furrowed.

Wasn’t it…?

No, he shook his head and held a palm up to his forehead. It must have always been green.

He stood back up straight, trembling with arousal and confusion. “What the fuck,” he whimpered, grimacing, and he wiped his sweaty hands on his black jeans. The dice he had been inspecting before didn’t seem all too important now, and he all but stumbled from the aisle.

Yugi was right there, and he looked up when Otogi approached. “Whoa, are you okay, you look like you just saw a ghost.”

Otogi chuckled shakily and waved him off before wandering into a different aisle, this one deserted, to try to collect himself.

His confusion soured the heat in his veins, and but it still took a couple of deep breaths for his heartrate to return to normal. He wasn’t sure what just happened – it wasn’t since his early teen years that he’d gotten so embarrassingly hot and bothered in public, back when his newfound hormones were raging out of control.

He shook his head again. He wasn’t really sure what was going on with himself, but, as seemed to be his habit lately, he shut the problem down and pushed it to the back of his mind.

Whatever. He would just wait for the others to get done with their shopping and then he could get far away from this shop.

* * *

That night, the dorm room was quiet. Ryou was gone again, off with his boyfriend, and though he was by no means a loud roommate, the silence seemed so deafening without Ryou’s ambient noises.

Otogi lied in bed, his damp hair braided out of the way, the covers pulled haphazardly half-way up his bare chest, his arms folded behind his head as he stared up at the top bunk. The green stone sat nestled on his chest, the golden chain warmed by his body and the heat of the shower he had just taken. (He didn’t think consciously about it, but the necklace had stayed on him the whole time, compelled there by some innate reluctance to take it off.)

He was comfortable and languid in a way that only the afterglow of a shower could provide, and in this relaxed state, it was all too easy for it to emerge –

A creeping warmth, coiling in his gut before slithering through his veins. The arousal he had abandoned at that game shop earlier was rearing its head. His body was not satisfied with him, and it was vociferous in letting Otogi know.

He sighed, slowly, letting himself slump against the mattress. He let it come, washing over him in warm waves. It wasn’t often that he got alone time when such urges came over him, and he was more than willing to let himself indulge in this.

He dropped a hand from behind his head to let it slide down over his body, over the warm skin, let it linger in sensitive places with sensual caresses that made him hum pleasantly. He traced with a single finger the polished surface of the green stone, and then dropped lower, and his touches pushed the covers away with them. He arched, his head, unsupported, tilting to one side. He blinked hazily, fingertips teasing himself, and his breath caught at what he saw.

There, in the corner, in a narrow vertical beam of orange light, a pale figure with those mesmerizing mismatched eyes.

Otogi couldn’t look away, and with distracted passes of his legs, he tossed off the covers completely and pushed away his sleep pants.

He moaned, quiet enough to pass for a simple huff of breath, and touched the sensitive areas of his body slowly, so slowly, teasing himself and those attentive eyes that devoured him with unblinking focus. And when he was panting and sweating against the sheets, his body churning with desire, he relented, and he teased the pleasure up from that warm pit in which it dwelled.

He gasped, arching up, his free hand now reaching up and behind to grab onto the metal frame of the bed, muscles and tendons clenching into harsh relief. He was hot everywhere, it was flushing from his pores and pouring from his lungs in molten breaths, and he longed for cold hands, cold lips, to touch him and soothe him.

But, for now, those eyes were enough, burning coldly in that stripe of light, and Otogi met them for every moment, even when he was thrashing, tense, as that heat roared and engulfed him in its fiery embrace, as he painted himself with lust and wrung every last drop of pleasure out.

When the rocking stopped, he slumped back to the mattress, his hand falling from its place on the bar to land languidly above his head on the pillow.

He blinked slowly at that stripe of light in the corner, and saw only the faint impression of one of Ryou’s posters on the wall.

He was still panting and trembling. That was intense.

And he couldn’t even solidly recall what he had fantasized about.

He got up and cleaned himself off. When he dreamed, it was of cold hands and blue hair pale as moonlight and those haunting eyes, though when he awoke, it’d all slip through his fingers like grains of sand.

* * *

Otogi only lingered on the outer edges of the festivities. One of Yugi’s (many) acquaintances was apparently throwing a party because she got top scores on her exam (it really sounded like a flimsy excuse, but he supposed a lot of kids did not need much reason to throw an absolute smasher where they could get drunk off their asses and sleep with people whose names they would hardly recall the next morning).

And perhaps, Otogi was once one of those people. He’d just have to smile and say the right lines and that was usually enough to get someone into bed with him. But tonight, he found himself disinterested. The thought of taking some random guy or girl for a romp in the sheets didn’t sound all that appealing.

So, for now, he would just nurse his drink and absently fiddle with his necklace.

But it seemed that even though he had no interest in propositioning other people, other people still held an interest in propositioning him.

She was perfectly curvy with gorgeous hair and sultry eyes, and he knew just by looking at her what her intentions were. Only a numbing apathy inside him could be summoned within him. And she smiled and flirted with that pseudo-bashfulness and fluttered her pretty eyelashes at him, but when he looked into her eyes, he could only think that they were… wrong.

They were bland, boring, they couldn’t keep his attention in the way he needed, yearned for.

But still, he adopted an air of politeness. Because, although Otogi wasn’t interested, he would never harshly turn someone down, especially when they were being so sweet.

He hadn’t managed to find a time to turn her down yet – mostly because she hadn’t gotten to actually propositioning him – when he looked up over her shoulder to blandly gaze at the crowd for the moment in hopes that one of his friends would come rescue him.

Instead, he caught eyes, one that piercing aqua and the other that hard gold, and his breath lodged in his throat. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand landed on his thigh, small and hot, almost burning through his dark jeans, her hand, and those eyes narrowed, almost fractionally, just barely enough to see.

Otogi tore his attention away and to the girl, and his smile was stiffer as he brushed her hand off his thigh. It was subtle, not a blatant rejection, but she understood the message anyways, her smile falling away to a disappointed pout, and she excused herself from the seat next to him. His breath heaved from his lungs, tense and relieved, and he looked back up, his drink forgotten on the table before him.

Those eyes loomed closer now, that tall frame curled over Otogi, that platinum blue hair draping down to cage him in, caught like prey in the coils of a serpent.

“I didn’t want her to touch me,” Otogi whispered, shuddering ecstatically as his chin was grasped between forefinger and thumb. “I didn’t want her.”

“I know,” came the assurance, sibilant, whispering, quiet and low though somehow Otogi could still hear it over the deafening pulse of the reveling around him. That voice was soothing, though still something like possession darkened the air between them. It made Otogi whimper breathlessly, and he reached up to curl his fingers in silky fabric, to hold himself tighter to the cold barrier pressing all around him. “You are mine, Ryuuji,” came the hiss, with the slightest flash of fangs.

“ _Yes_ ,” he gasped, leaning back into the hand caressing his face and hair, into the palm and fingers that tingled his skin with their chill. “I’m yours,” he whispered.

Hands tightened around him, clutching him tight to a cold, hard chest, and he melted happily, moaning so brokenly, blissful.

And suddenly, he wasn’t in his chair by the table anymore, he was in a bathroom, bent over a counter facing a mirror, with that icy force at his back and slender, gelid hands slithering under his clothing.

He gasped, moaned, arched, and writhed, his head falling back onto a firm shoulder and glossy hair. He was hot and trembling and panting, but those cold hands soothed him just as they wrung pleasure from his every nerve, like plucking notes from a harp.

“ _Yes!_ ” and the cry was rough and raw and ecstatic, as those hands gave him attention in all the areas that needed it most, his pants somehow moved down just enough for easy access. He rocked into the waves of pleasure, and turned his head again, panted hotly against a pale, slender neck.

It was so good, this aching, tender ecstasy, and when a cold face butted against his cheek and fangs brushed threateningly against his jaw, it reached that unbearable peak that made everything in him churn and writhe and cry.

Hissing, adoring whispers wriggled into his ears as he shuddered and arched, hips weakly rocking. Cold lips pressed a kiss to the hot shell of his ear, and he shivered, lips parting wider. Those hands continued petting his shuddering, sweating body, though slowly this time, and then a low growl, “You are mine, Ryuuji.”

“Yes, I’m yours,” and he turned to offer his lips up for a kiss, but that cold presence was gone.

He jumped, his fingers curling into the edge of the sink basin in front of him, his arms shaking. He saw only his own flushed expression, green eyes teary and glassy and eyeliner smearing.

He glanced down. His pants were undone and pushed halfway down his thighs, and he’d… made quite the mess on the side of the counter. With a grimace, he cleaned himself up and adjust his clothes and tried to wipe the mess up as best as he could. Did he… just masturbate at a party…?

“No,” he hissed.

There… there had been someone else.

He wasn’t even that drunk – why couldn’t he remember the face of the person who had just given him an absolutely spectacular handjob?

It’d felt so good, so right, so dangerously thrilling.

With a sour pout, he excited the bathroom. They just left, too. Rude. He didn’t even get the chance to ask about returning the favor.

Throughout the rest of the night, he kept an eye open for any face that might spark a memory, but just one look at their eyes and he felt deep in his gut that they weren’t the person he was looking for.

And when he and Ryou walked back to their dorm that night, clad in thick jackets, Otogi felt a yearning ache uncoiling in his stomach.

* * *

The whole group buzzed with excitement, save for Jounouchi, who complained quite loudly the entire way there.

“I’ve never been to something like this before, let alone one that is Halloween themed,” Yugi chattered to Ryou.

The Halloween Fun House was arranged by Domino University’s upperclassmen, one of which Otogi had bumped into on that day so many weeks ago. If the way everyone had been talking about it non-stop for the past month was anything to go by, it was projected to be a big hit for DU’s annual autumn festival.

“I just hope it’s not too crowded,” Anzu added. “I don’t think it would be all that fun if we’re pack in shoulder-to-shoulder.”

“That’s true,” someone replied, but Otogi would be lying if he said that he was still paying attention to the conversation.

It wasn’t all that late, but it was almost dark out, anyways, and Otogi blinked up at the sky. With all the city lights drowning out the stars, the dark edge of the horizon looked almost black. A chilly breeze twined through the barren trees lining the walkway, and leaves rasped across the sidewalk.

He shivered under his jacket, though it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

He walking to the side and just behind the rest of the group, but he still didn’t notice the way their eyes worriedly trailed to him every once and a while.

_“He’s been acting really weird lately and it’s been scaring me,” Ryou whispered to Yugi just as they grouped up to walk to the festival._

_“I’m sure he’s just stressed about his coursework. We all are.”_

_“I don’t know…”_

The murmur of a crowd in the streets hummed closer and closer, and then the wooded walkway emptied out into the pedestrian thoroughfare that lined the street. The street itself was block off, and it was filled with warmly lit booths and stalls of foods and products and games.

“As much as I would love to linger here, we should probably get through the fun house first before we go through all the other festivities,” Anzu suggest, and there was a collective murmur of agreement, save for Jounouchi, who groaned a loud protest that everyone ignored.

So, they wandered down the sidewalk running just parallel to all the commotion, and Otogi quietly watched the flashes of color and energy. Loud laughing voices and the snapping of twigs caught his attention, and he looked the other way. Some children played in the skeletal shadows of the trees, laughed, and chased each other as their mothers watched from a bench along the walkway.

One mother barked out a sharp reprimand, and the children scattered, but Otogi found his eyes lingering in the shadows of the trees, where the light faded so quickly but still caught and glinted off of two eyes that gleamed like green and gold stones.

A hand wrapped tight around his wrist, and Otogi gasped, whipping his head over.

It was Honda, looking down at him with a quizzically furrowed brow.

“Where are you going, man?”

“I…” Otogi looked back over at the shadows of the trees. Whatever he had seen there was now gone. “I don’t know.”

Honda scoffed and shook his head. “C’mon, dude.” He gently nudged Otogi forward, toward their friends that awaited them, looking back at them, all with concerned faces that Otogi tried to ignore.

But he still caught his eyes wandering back to the tree line.

* * *

Entry to the fun house was free of charge – a affluential alumni had donated a large sum of funds to the Autumn Festival Task Force and Committee, and said funds more than covered the construction of the fun house.

And the work put into it showed. The distortion room – that looked much bigger than it actually was, as it was painted in just the right way to make it look larger, though the height at the end of it couldn’t have been more than a hundred-thirty centimeters, causing even the shortest in their group to stoop to get through the doorway at the end.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, they were met with a fright – a pressure plate on the floor activated a mechanism that had a fabricated ghoul wailing and whooshing menacingly over their heads – Jounouchi yelped like a frightened dog, Ryou squealed with delight, and everyone else had a rather normal range of gasps.

They were funneled into a dark hallway, lit only by sickly red lights that made it hard to focus.

The hallway narrowed, and they were dumped out into a thin corridor… filled with mirrors. It was still dark, hard to see, and the numerous panels of mirrors were arranged into a labyrinth. Laughter echoed off the reflective surfaces as they bumped into the walls, into each other, as they tried to find a way through the maze.

Otogi snickered when Ryou clipped a mirror and hissed, cradling his injured elbow in his hand. Otogi looked to the mirror, and his breath froze in his throat. In his reflection, he saw eyes – stained red by the lights – hovering just over his shoulder.

He whirled, but no one was there, and though his heart pounded in his chest, disappointment welled within him. He shakily reached up, fisted the pendant that rested against his sternum.

He turned to follow, but his friends were gone, though he could hear the echoes of their laughter ringing through the corridors of the mirrors.

He gazed down at the floor, trying to ignore the mirrors distracting him and obscuring the true path from his vision… but he kept bumping into mirrors, and every time he would look up, he would see those eyes, and he would turn, but they would be gone.

He bumped into a mirror again, and suddenly, he was caged in on both sides. He looked up, panting slightly, his breath fogging the glass, but he could still see those eyes, and he whirled.

This time, that figure loomed in front of him, pale hair gleaming in the red light. Otogi melted with relief.

“It’s you,” he sighed, immediately stepping closer, but _he_ was stepping closer, too, and soon Otogi’s shoulders were pressed to hard glass.

He was trapped, and he didn’t care.

Cold arms wrapped around him, caught him in their endless coils, caressed him, his cheek and his neck and his dark hair, and he reached up to curl his fingers into cool, silky clothing and red-stained platinum blue strands.

“It is,” that sibilant voice assured, hissing right into Otogi’s ear.

Otogi reached up higher, wrapped his arms around the neck hidden beneath that endless hair to tug that pale face closer. He cupped a frigid cheek.

“Kiss me,” he whispered yearningly, nearly crying with the longing, “Please, kiss me.”

And finally, _finally_ , those pale lips were on his, embracing him in a kiss so cold that it numbed everything else.

Nothing else mattered.

He wished he could be trapped in this kiss forever, lost in its endless maze, never finding his way out.

* * *

The group laughed as they finally exited the fun house.

Anzu looked over at everyone’s smiling faces, and her own smile faltered.

“Aren’t we missing someone?”

They all looked among themselves, confused, as the thoughts slipped away like coils slithering into the shadows of the barren trees.

“No, we have everyone.”

They walked away to revel in the other festivities. They soon forgot the tingling itch of confusion in the back of their minds.

**Author's Note:**

> Ameles Potamos is the "river of forgetfulness" in Greek mythology where the spirits in Hades would go to drink the water, forget their previous lives, and be born into a new one. 
> 
> Also, it took me a while to get there, but I finally included the "Maze" theme at the end of the story. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this! See ya later!


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